August 16, 2010 — Contents

MONDAY AUGUST 16 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Like Putin, like Party

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Once again, Russia rapes Poland

(3)  OP-ED:  Does Russia Today have a Tomorrow?

(4)  Russia Burns and Boils

(5)  Putin, Man on Fire

NOTE:  Ramzan Kadyrov of Chechnya has decided to change his job title. Soon, he will be “imam.”

NOTE:  La Russophobe is quoted in the popular German publication Zeit Online.

NOTE:  Time magazine road-trips through Russia, and you can go along for the virtual ride.

EDITORIAL: Putin’s Party, a Clan of Liars

EDITORIAL

Putin’s Party, a Clan of Liars

Until recently there were quite a few Russophile maggots who were attempting to claim that global warming would be good for frozen Russia, unlocking untold riches from the permafrost.  Then — whoops! — the nation was ravaged by wildfires, and suddenly Russians high and low were decrying the horror of climate change and its untold new setbacks in store for Russia.  It was quite a sight for Russophobic eyes to behold.

With harsh, cold reality slapping the Kremlin right in the face, its leaders panicked and once again went into Soviet mode.  Lie, deny, cheat, steal.  You know the drill.

Eager to show how active he was in fighting the wildfires, Putin actually jumped into an aircraft and pushed a button dropping water on the fire.  Naturally, photos of he-man Putin were circulated far and wide on state-owned TV.

His political party, United Russia, didn’t bother with such trappings.  It simply invented facts wholesale.

EDITORIAL: Once again, Russia rapes Poland

EDITORIAL

Once again, Russia rapes Poland

Any poor souls benighted enough to believe the gibberish published a few weeks ago that Russian relations with Poland were actually improving despite the recent plane crash on Russian soil that killed a large number of high-ranking Polish government officials received a splash of cold water right in the face last week.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk moaned that with the investigation entering its final phase, cooperation with Russia is worse now than it was at the start.  The Kremlin is frustrating Poland’s effort to get to the bottom of the crash at every turn.

OP-ED: Some thoughts on Russia Today’s Tomorrow

Some thoughts on Russia Today‘s Tomorrow

by Ethan S. Burger

Exclusive to La Russophobe

Ethan Burger

The Russian people have not experienced any significant benefit from the symbolic pressing of the “reset” button in U.S.-Russian relations. Just ask any Russian citizen what they think about the necessity of urging the work force to stay home or establishing 120 “anti-smog centers” in Moscow as a result of the fires near the capital. This situation in Moscow is being well reported by the foreign press and Russia Today, can the same be said of the state-owned media?

I have often wondered what the Russian leadership thinks it gains from placing special supplements of Russia Today in major newspapers like The Washington Post and the New York Times.   Most U.S. newspapers are struggling, as Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in The New Yorker, this did not prevent The Washington Post from undertaking a comprehensive investigation analysis of the wasteful homeland security complex (both governmental and private-sector, largely government-funded) that has emerged post 9/11. It is doubtful that any Russian media outlet that reaches a large segment of the population would ever have the courage to undertake a comparable effort about the fires currently spreading through the country.

Russia Burns, and Boils

Simon Shuster, writing for Time magazine:

Russians are known to be a long-suffering people, especially when it comes to putting up with leaders who are senile, negligent or much, much worse. But the government’s reaction to the ongoing heat wave may be hard to pass off with the usual shrug. Across much of central and western Russia, more than 500 wildfires continue to burn out of control. The capital is shrouded in a cloud of poisonous smoke, and the morgues are overflowing as the nationwide death rate jumps 50%. President Dmitri Medvedev, meanwhile, has spent much of this month talking about police reforms, and many local officials have simply gone on vacation. Now, as they return, the leaders of Russia — both big and small — are likely to have a political firestorm to deal with.

Putin, Man on Fire

Author Ralph Peters, writing in the New York Post:

Red-headed spy Anna Chapman is no longer the hottest thing in Russia. Now it’s the 500 out-of-control wildfires devouring thousands of square miles of the countryside.

This conflagration makes California’s annual blazes look like Boy Scout campfires. The fires have consumed entire villages and ravaged the critical wheat harvest; now they threaten a key nuclear-weapons-research facility. A huge naval logistics base burned — along with 200 helicopters and planes.
But the reputation of Russia’s new czar, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, may have been scorched worst of all.

August 13, 2010 — Contents

FRIDAY AUGUST 13 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  Russia’s Jackass President

(2)  OP-ED:  Would you buy a Used Car from Vladimir Putin?

(3)  Putin’s Childish, Self-destructive Grain Embargo

(4)  Does Russia hate America . . . or Love it?

(5)  Killing Russia, Slowly

(6)  Authoritarianism:  It Just doesn’t Work

NOTE:  LR is pleased to welcome Stalin scholar Paul Gregory back to our virtual pages with a second op-ed analyzing the Putin years. Our next issue will carry an op-ed from legal scholar Ethan Burger. We welcome op-ed submissions on any topic involving Russia, they can be submitted by email to:  larussophobe@yahoo.com.

NOTE:  Watch Russia go up in flames.

EDITORIAL: Russia’s Jackass “President”

EDITORIAL

Russia’s Jackass “President”

Last week, the farcical spectacle of Russian politics became even more ludicrous.  And Russia edged that much closer to the abyss from which there can be no return.

Even as Vladimir Putin took the wheel of a fire-fighting aircraft to “prove” he remains the same superhero who single-handedly “saved” Russia from collapse, when asked his puppet “successor” Dima Medvedev said he had no idea who the candidates for “president” of the country would be in 2012, giving rise to howls of derision from Putin’s flunkies.  Finally, Russia’s top doctor said there was no health risk to Russians resulting from the massive cloud of smog hovering over their homes as a result of the national wave of wildfires, not even if that smoke was radioactive.

It could not be more clear, then, that Medevedev is not the master of his domain, that he does not even have the requisite authority to decide if he will seek reelection — just as we have been saying since his first took “power” two years ago. It could not be more clear, by his own words, that the Medvedev presidency is simply a shameless fraud being perpetrated on the sheep-like denizens of this benighted country.

Nor could the failure of the policies of Medvedev’s lord and master Vladimir Putin, whose incompetence is now palpable.

OP-ED: Would you buy a Used Car from Vladimir Putin?

Would You Buy a Used Car from Vladimir Putin?

By Paul Gregory

Author of Politics, Murder, and Love in Stalin’s Kremlin

Exclusive to La Russophobe
 

Professor Paul R. Gregory

The Russian government announced last week it is selling shares of eleven state-owned companies to new shareholders. The companies include the national railroad, two state banks, a state oil company (Rosneft), and the state oil pipeline company (Transneft).

Proceeds from the sale are to be applied against the state budget deficit. In all cases, the government will retain majority ownership. Although there may be strategic investors, purchasers will clearly be minority shareholders. Notably, the announcement coincided with Conoco’s withdrawal from Russia after its billion dollar investments in the Russian oil industry soured.

Although most major investors in Russia have seen their investments collapse after confrontations with tax authorities, environmental agencies, Russian courts, and Kremlin-favored oligarchs, buyers of shares in these eleven Russian companies are supposed to be protected. After all, minority shareholders now have the state on their side. Buyers should, however, beware for three reasons!

Putin’s Childish, Self-Destructive Grain Embargo

Paul Goble reports:

The embargo on the export of grain Vladimir Putin has announced will hurt Russia’s image as a reliable supplier to the world, Moscow experts say. Moreover, they say, it will not necessarily keep bread prices down as Putin said but rather may allow Russian companies and officials to profit through the sale of grain later after prices rise. At the end of July, Russia’s agriculture ministry said that Moscow had no plans to impose an export embargo on grain despite indications of a serious decline in the size of the crop because of the drought and despite already dramatic increases in the price of bread and other products in some regions.

But then, last week, Putin called for and the Russian government imposed a temporary embargo on the export of grain for the period August 15 through December 31 in order to ensure that there would be enough grain for the domestic market to prevent any further increases in bread prices.

Does Russia hate America . . . or Love it?

The Jamestown Foundation reports:

The Galygin television show is perhaps the best popular representation of Russians’ idiosyncratic relationship with the United States.

The show copies Seinfeld, the quintessential American sitcom, with its own standup comedy bits sprinkled between the daily lives of Russian versions of Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer. While the former is familiar, Galygin.ru characters are deep patriots. In one episode, for example, they throw a Western tourist out of a bar while cheering on the Russian team in a televised hockey game (STS TV channel, February, 2010).

Russian mainstream press outlets, mostly controlled by the government, convey a rigid narrative about what the West (Europe and the United States) means to Russia. In the crudest terms, the narrative claims that the West is trying to undermine Russia by luring former Soviet states into its own sphere of influence. Broadcast by the national TV channels, it portrays United States as a competitive power.

However, little is known about what ordinary Russians believe the West has to say about Russia.

Killing Russia, Slowly

Vladimir Ryzhkov, writing in the Moscow Times:

Behind President Dmitry Medvedev’s superficial and meaningless words of “modernization” and “freedom is better than a lack of freedom,” Russia continues its repression of opposition members, human rights activists and independent journalists. A good example of how Medvedev’s “modernization and freedom” is flourishing can be found in the republic of Altai, a picturesque, mountainous region in West Siberia. Criminal charges were filed by Altai Governor Alexander Berdnikov against Sergei Mikhailov, editor-in-chief of the local Listok newspaper, for its critical articles against Berdnikov and other bureaucrats in his administration.

Authoritarianism: It just doesn’t work

Dani Rodrik, professor of political economy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, writing in the Moscow Times:

On July 31, several hundred pro-democracy activists congregated in a Moscow square to protest government restrictions on freedom of assembly. They were promptly surrounded by police officers, who tried to break up the demonstration. A leading critic of the Kremlin and several others were hastily dragged into a police car and driven away.

This is par for the course in a country that is ruled by the strong hand of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, where persecution of the government’s opponents, human rights violations and judicial abuses have become routine. At a time when democracy and human rights have become global norms, such transgressions do little to enhance Russia’s global reputation.

August 11, 2010 — Contents

WEDNESDAY AUGUST 11 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  America versus Russia — No Contest

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Arresting Nemtsov

(3)  While Russia burned, Putin Sang

(4)  The Further Adventures of Putin’s Gestapo

(5)  Russian Patriots Morari and Timurziev

(6)  Russia, Melting

(7) CARTOON:  Putvedev to the Rescue!

A postcard from Vladimir Putin's Russia

EDITORIAL: Russia versus America — No Contest

EDITORIAL

Russia versus America — No Contest

Last week the U.S. government reported second-quarter growth of 2.4%, while the International Monetary Fund projected 4.3% growth for Russia in 2010.  The Russian rate was nearly double that of the U.S., yet the IMF harshly qualified the Russian figure as merely “moderate.” It’s not hard to understand why.

IMF figures indicate that the annual value of the U.S. economy exceeds $14 trillion — the largest single value for any nation on this planet by a very wide margin (in fact, the U.S. GDP is as large as the next three largest nations in the world combined).

And Russia?  Russia doesn’t even rank in the top 10 nations of the world according to the IMF, coming in at #12 with a puny, pathetic value of just $1.2 trillion in annual production (the vast majority of which is just the pumping of crude oil).

EDITORIAL: Arresting Nemtsov

EDITORIAL

Arresting Nemtsov

Imagine that Sarah Palin is on her way to a Tea Party rally in Washington DC, to be held a few blocks from the White House.  She stops to autograph a copy of her new book Going Rogue for an adoring fan, and a swarm of FBI agents descends on her.  They grab her, rip open her shirt, manhandle her, stuff her into a waiting sedan and whisk her away, denying her the chance to utter a single word at the rally.  Her “crime”?  Intending to attend and speak at the rally against Obama and his policies.

Though we have little admiration for the followers of Barack Obama, we’re willing to bet that not a single one of them would support such an action. To the contrary, we feel sure they’d condemn it.  After all, such actions would be directly contrary to the fundamental principles of liberalism by which Obama is supposed to be governing the country. For sure, they’d flout the very fabric of the U.S. Constitution.

Yet, when exactly this same thing actually happened in Russia, to Boris Nemtsov last week, the adherents of Vladimir Putin did nothing but cheer.

While Russia burned, Putin Sang

A modern Russian fire truck rushing down a modern Russian road. courtesy of the New York Times

“Why the [expletive] do we need an innovation center in Skolkovo if we don’t have common firefighting vehicles?”

– Russian blogger top_lap

Hero journalist Yulia Latynina, writing in the Moscow Times:

Since the first wildfires started a month ago, 125,000 hectares of Russia’s forest have been destroyed in 17 regions, and 40 people have died.

Russia’s statistics on casualties from fires have always differed drastically from those in the West. For example, four firefighters died during wildfires in Washington state in 2001. Nine firefighters died in Colorado in 2002. Eleven firefighters died during Spain’s fires of 2005. Only one firefighter has died during this summer’s fires in Russia.

The Further Adventures of Vladimir Putin’s Gestapo

The Moscow Times reports (watch a video of the arrest described on YouTube):

Moscow region police flexed their muscle Wednesday in the conflict over the Khimki forest, detaining anti-deforestation campaign leader Yevgenia Chirikova in downtown Moscow in front of dozens of reporters.

Meanwhile, a Moscow region court has approved the arrest of two suspects in a daring attack last week on Khimki City Hall, despite what supporters said was shaky evidence against them.

Part of the Khimki forest is being cleared to make way for an $8 billion highway connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg. Opponents of the project say the highway could be built around the woods.

“Ten riot police officers grabbed me and dragged me away,” Chirikova said by phone after her questioning ended.

She had been speaking at the Independent Press Center, not far from the Kropotkinskaya metro station.

Russian Patriots Morari and Timurziev

Two Russian journalists have been honored by Human Rights Watch with Hellman/Hammett Grants for standing up for democracy at enormous personal risk. We congratulate these two magnificent Russian patriots:

Natalia Morari (Russia) is an investigative journalist who writes about corruption and money laundering for the Moscow-based newspaper The New Times. In December 2007, when she was returning from an assignment in Israel, she was barred from entering Russia, held overnight at the airport, and deported to Moldova, her home country. Two weeks later, she was told that she was considered a threat to national security and would no longer be allowed to enter Russia. In February 2008, Morari married Ilya Barabanov, a Russian citizen who is also an investigative journalist at The New Times. When they attempted to visit Russia together as husband and wife, Morari was still refused entry.

Alikhan Kureishevich Timurziev (Russia) covered events in Ingushetia, North Ossetia, and Chechnya as a reporter and then deputy editor of the newspaper Ingushetiya, often writing about corruption and human rights abuses. He also worked with the award-winning Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was later assassinated, arranging meetings and accompanying her on reporting trips. This prompted local police to start monitoring him. Local authorities tried to bribe him into publishing an article smearing international nongovernmental organizations working in the Caucuses. After he refused, unidentified men abducted him, beat him, and left him in a field. He reported the attack to the local prosecutor’s office, but the case was not pursued. Harassment continued; then Timurziev came down with a mysterious disease, leaving him comatose for weeks and causing him to lose most of his teeth and hair. In 2007, he went into hiding and then fled to Poland. For the past 2½ years, he has been living in a refugee camp in Poland waiting for action on an asylum application.

Russia, Melting

Jim Heinz, Moscow correspondent for the Associated Press, reports:

As Moscow’s record heatwave began, I threw open all the screenless windows in my apartment, hoping for some breeze — but mostly what I got was visits from bugs and, briefly, an inquisitive crow. Then, tendrils of the acrid smoke from the peat-bog fires surrounding the city wafted in, bringing nausea and dry-mouth.

The recommendation of Russia’s top doctor to hang wet sheets at the windows to block the smoke just makes the rooms more stifling. With no end in sight to the misery, another doctor’s advice may be the only one thing that brings relief — think as little as possible. In my 11 years in Moscow, the most frequent question from friends abroad has been “Aren’t the winters tough?” Maybe so. But Russians handle winter with aplomb — fur hats, afternoons in steamy bathhouses, long evenings gulping warming vodka around the table in toasty kitchens.

The country’s not geared for summer, however.

CARTOON: Putin and Medvedev to the Rescue!

Source:  Alexei Merinov’s Facebook.

August 5, 2010 — Contents

FRIDAY AUGUST 4 CONTENTS

(1)  EDITORIAL:  In Russia, a Dog’s Life

(2)  EDITORIAL:  Putin on the Edge

(3)  ESSEL:  See Russian Train Run

(4)  VIDEO:  Fighting Back against Putin’s Gestapo

(5)  Putin, Putin, Uber Alles!

(6)  Annals of Shamapova

NOTE:  We’ve got loads of video in today’s issue.  (1) and (4) both focus on YouTubes, and have you seen Direct TV’s new commercial lampooning the “New Russians”? If not have a peek.

NOTE:  Magnetic photos of real, normal, average Russian people living in real, normal, average Russian poverty, courtesy of English Russia.

NOTE:  Speaking of “A Dog’s Life” in Russia, here’s Russia at its worst, dismembering dogs for fun, also courtesy of English Russia.  Shocking, use care when viewing.

EDITORIAL: In Russia, a Dog’s Life

EDITORIAL

In Russia, a Dog’s Life

According to the Russian government, a citizen of Russia needs an income of at least $6.43 per day to survive.  For this reason, the Kremlin has established a minimum wage of $190 per month, which works out to $1.18 per hour for four weeks of full-time work.

The minimum wage in the United States, by contrast, is $7.25 per hour —  a figure many argue is criminally low.

You read that right — the minimum legal wage for an American is more than six times higher than that of a Russian.  Many individual American states have their own minimum wages requirements which are even higher.  The State of Washington offers the highest — $8.55 per hour.

And America is a capitalist country — the minimum wage in socialist countries like France is far higher, hovering around $12 per hour.  France’s GDP is only slightly more than double that of Russia, yet its minimum wage is more than ten times higher. That single fact tells you all you really need to know about how much the KGB regime of Vladimir Putin cares about its people.

But there’s a lot more horror to consider.

EDITORIAL: Putin on the Edge

EDITORIAL

Putin on the Edge

An extraordinary YouTube video was making the rounds in Russia circles last week.  It showed Vladimir Putin in his shirtsleeves being confronted outside a government building in Nizhny Novgorod by a throng of enraged local residents who had watched their lives go up in flames.

Putin is attacked for having done nothing to prepare the local population for the disaster of spreading wildfires, and for having failed to make a timely response to the disaster after it occurred.  In brutal, condescending language, talking to Putin as if he were a child, the residents demand action, and Putin stammers ridiculous promises about rebuilding homes from the ground up.

Needless to say, the confrontation was not aired on any national broadcast television, because all those stations are owned and operated by Putin himself.

ESSEL: See Russian Train Run. Run, train, run!

See Russian Train Run. Run, train, run!

Dave Essel

Grani.ru is currently carrying a short article about the start of a new high-speed train service between St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod. This made me curious as I didn’t think Russia had any fast trains. (Not that it is that fast: it covers the 1100 kilometres in 8 hours 25 minutes, which is 129 kph or 80 mph. European high speed trains do 300 kph.)

Grani goes on to say that the train, called the Sapsan, is a joint venture between Russian Railways and Siemens under which Russia is buying 8 trains for 276 million Euro. As this sounded more like a purchase contract than a joint venture, my curiosity was sparked and I followed up on Russian Wikipedia.